Rishi

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave

I know how all of this up until now sounds.  My family on both sides are mostly A-Type Logical thinkers, most of them are Mathematicians, Scientists and Teachers, with the occasional Doctor and Lawyer here and there.  I have always had as much of an affinity for the Sciences as I have for the Arts and for spiritual pursuits.  The last 9 years of this life especially, I have been very focused in the modern sciences.  So believe me when I say, I know exactly how the last few posts sound to a scientific and/or skeptical mind.  But it's all true, and I've even left out some of the stranger details as they weren't really pertinent to the exercise.

With that in mind, this last post closing the series covers a few of the events in the last year that might make the previous posts look reasonable by comparison.  There have been times when I have needed the touchstones of my spouse and family to reassure me I wasn't losing my mind - and because they don't have faith and consider all these events to be simple coincidence, they have been very reassuring when they tell me they believe I am fine.  For myself I believe in some coincidence, yes, but I feel strongly that after a certain point or a certain number of "coincidences" in a row, and/or a certain level of improbability of an event happening, one must accede that perhaps there is no coincidence in some events all.

As the saying goes, God speaks to us all the time in many ways, but you only really see and hear it if you open your eyes and ears.  Having had my eyes and ears opened when I didn't realize, or had forgotten, that they were closed, I have a whole new appreciation of that adage...

The last twelve months has been a journey full of gifts, but I will write here about the first set, which were the defining events that brought me back to Sri Bhagavan's feet.

I love to travel whenever possible. I love to experience other countries and cultures, particularly ancient ones.  I have had a strong desire since I was a teen to travel to India, I always felt that once I did I would find something wonderful and important there.  Again, I know I'm not the first to have had that conviction, nor am I the last to find it to be true.  As I wrote in my last post, we were given one of the greatest gifts I have received in this life, in the opportunity to travel to and across Mother India in a way we would never have been able to on our own.  We were given the chance to go places and experience from a position that one can only do when traveling with people who are native to the cultures and cities you visit, rather than from a tourist perspective.  Given it was still a privileged perspective and so not so comparable to the lives of the majority of the population, but it was still very different than the vantage a tourist would have had.

There were several interesting events leading up to the trip, but this particular tale should probably start with a good friend who I will call 'M' and an invitation to go to a musical I have always loved and hadn't seen in well over ten years.  She was offered the tickets for free, they were excellent seats too.  Her husband had no interest, so she asked me.  This was about a month before we were to travel.  The musical in question was "Cats".

I mentioned earlier that during the year leading up to our trip our old lady Lillith, (aka. Lilly or Bunny Bear - cats always have 3 names, after all), was deteriorating in health due to old age.  Some think it strange, but we count our adopted feline friends as among our own family, as close to having children as we will come in this life.  If we had a dog or any other animal, we would think the same way.  I once had a snake and a tarantula, and I considered them the same.  My spouse draws the line at those species without legs and a spine, but I don't.  I'm that person that will pick up a spider or an earwig and take it outside to a safe shelter in the yard rather than harm it, when at all possible.  I have felt this way since I was a child, all life is equal and sacred, regardless of our somewhat questionable assessment of their level of cognitive ability or self awareness.

It's easier to become attached to those creatures that have clear personalities, who are definitively recognizable individuals to the senses of our limited, Human bodies.  Those who interact with you daily become fixtures in your life and home, and you miss them when they're gone, just as with any Human.  Seventeen years is a long time to have someone in your life every day.  We kept trying new treatments and hoping to see an improvement in Lilly, we even saw small responses on occasion - I think maybe we saw them more often that actually happened.  But the fact is she wasn't really sick, she was just old.  And her old systems were starting to shut down.  Nothing could stop that.

I didn't really think about it when M asked me if I wanted to go to the musical.  It's one of my favorites, though I hadn't seen it in a very long time, and that was really all I thought of when I accepted, even on the way to the performance.  What stuck in my head as soon as the character of Grizabella limped onto the stage though was her iconic song, "Memories".  It's an interesting song, really.  On the surface it's steeped in grief, worldly emotions and experiences and their passing.  But it's also about letting them go to pass on to rebirth and renewal and become something new, about seeing past an individual's exterior, material appearance.  It seems at first like a dirge for the loss of the material, but ends up a celebration of soul, creation and life, though certainly from a more Western perspective.  Anyway, that was when I knew that Lilly wouldn't be with us for much longer, but I didn't suspect she would leave us quite so soon.

The song stuck with me, even after she passed.  It traveled with me to India and replayed in my head everywhere we went.  I wasn't grieving for her but for myself, and I knew that, but I couldn't help it.  After all that time, it felt like a piece of my own self had been ripped out and left bleeding.  But it couldn't have happened any other time or way, because it was that very pain that made me reach out with everything I had, and left me open enough to perceive the reply.

The day after her passing, I lit incense and a candle, gave flowers, and prayed to Sri Ganapati for the first time.  I asked him to remove any obstacles in her way and to watch over her passage to wherever she was going next.

When we arrived in India it was the beginning of Ganesha Chaturthi - not something we had intentionally planned, we realized the timing after the tickets were bought.  We attended several pujas in our first week in Hyderabad, beautiful, colorful and powerful.  Each time Lilly's name was the first and last prayer in my mind.  When we began traveling across the states, city to city, we visited many beautiful and old temples.  I bought arcanas for my family, and she was always the first I named.  I asked Sri Lakshmi Narayan in many forms to look out for her, and petitioned Sri Hanuman to protect her, over and over again, and that song still played in my head.

Then we landed in Indore and drove to Ujain.  We knew we were going to another big Temple, but we didn't know which one - we were pretty much off the grid so couldn't check our plans, and the group was traveling in different cars.  We were largely being dragged along to one beautiful surprise after another by that time.  We assumed the Temple would either be Jain, as I knew we would be seeing a couple while there, or a Vishnu Temple as all but one Temple had been so far.  But this was completely unlike any Temple we had been to yet.

We were handed bowls full of offerings and lead through corridors underground, and then literally pulled into a chamber packed with an impossible number of people for such a small space.  Monks pulled and pushed people along and all one could do was follow the flow, like a human tide.   When we were pushed up to the front of the center of the circle, I suddenly understood where I was.

I had only once, ever, seen a Lingam, and that had been just a day or two before, from a distance in a market next to a different Temple - we were largely kept clear of those markets so rarely stopped at any.  I wondered at the time why they were selling such strange looking mortar and pestles at a Temple - I had no idea what I was looking at.  Remember, I had never been introduced to Shaivism, every Hindu ideology I had learned about was Vaishnava - and every temple we had gone to in our journey until now was also either a Vishnu Temple or a Hanuman Temple.  This still surprises me when I think about it, it seems extremely unlikely, but it's the truth.  It's almost as if these things were hidden from me until just the right moment...  thinking about it now, it was Mahakaal after all.

When I saw the Jyotirlingam at Mahakaaleshwar I immediately and instinctively knew who and what it represented, and was suddenly very happy.  The Pandit or Monk seated at the edge of the Yoni smiled in an encouraging and familiar way I hadn't seen at any temple yet, though maybe he was just amused to see a couple of goris in the crowd.  LOL  I handed him my bowl.  He guided me through the offerings and abishek, and they felt familiar.  The energy in the room was far more than just the human mass surrounding us, it was calm in the midst of chaos, and the touch of the cool stone was like nothing I could try and describe.  Then the Pandit handed me back the bowl with the prasad, and I was pulled away and out of the chamber.

I stood staring at Nandi, who I hadn't noticed earlier, surrounded by his own mass of devotees.  Here was something else I had never seen or been introduced to, I didn't know his name at the time, but He felt familiar and right.  Something fundamental had shifted but I didn't know what.  My mind had been a completely calm blank while in the sanctum, and I realized I hadn't petitioned Sri Shiva for Lillith's well being.  I had a feeling He probably knew, but still...  I walked over to Nandi to touch his feet and stroke his back.  People were leaning in to say things into his ears, so I did the same and whispered Lillith's name, in my heart asking that if possible she be granted Moksha, but if not possible then at least a wonderful life where she might grow significantly towards that, in her next time around.  I felt much better, and turned to follow my friends up the tunnels and ramps to the surface.  But the day wasn't over, there were two more Lingam shrines and a lovely temporary pavilion for Ganapati during Chaturthi.

There are four *three (edits at end) Lingam shrines at Mahakaaleshwar, from what I understand.  One is only open once or twice a year during special holidays, so we didn't visit that one.  The third and last one we saw looked to me to be the largest, and if the Jyotirlingam had a powerful effect on me then this one knocked me flat out.

I still don't really know what happened, and I've stopped trying to analyze it.  We walked into an ante-chamber room made of cut stone, yet was full of light from windows in the ceiling and tops of the walls.  It seemed brighter and whiter than the light outside.  People were seated on the floor along the sides of the chamber and occasionally people would come in and walk up to the edge of the sanctum and either go in or pray and then bow in respect and turn away.  Inside the sanctum was a mass of activity and the most sonorant, resonant chant going on that I had ever heard, something similar to the Gyuto Monks only maybe not so deeply voiced, a bit faster, and more powerful.  The constant motion was of many people washing and washing and washing the Lingam in all kinds of things, sweeping and swirling them over and around the stone in synchronized motions, creating a visual effect of something like a whirlpool all over and around the Stone.  I had a momentary thought of a similarity to the accretion disk around a black hole.

The chant seemed to boom through the room, it gripped me from inside and made me vibrate in the same way you do when standing next to a loud bass woofer at a concert or club - or next to the bass percussion section of a Drum Corps.  I drifted closer to the lintel of the sanctum, mesmerized and drawn in, and the room around me faded into the background.  I didn't dare go any further, but stood right there in a kind of daze, watching, I don't know for how long.  I'd never felt anything like it in memory of this life.

When time came back to me, (sorry, pun really not intended), I realized I must have been there for a while and my party had probably moved on and I should catch up.  Still dazed, I backed away and turned to go when a old man in saffron robes of the style the Monks there wore, and who seemed authoritative, gripped my arm and stopped me.  In halting English mixed with Hindi he asked me sternly if I knew what I was looking at, who it was in that chamber.  I couldn't find words, the chant was still throbbing through the chamber, I could only nod and make soft noises of assent.  He explained it was God, Time itself, the Beginning and the End of all things.  Again, I could only nod, I felt dizzy and like electricity was crawling over my skin in pricks and zaps.  His grip on my arm was tight and I think if he had let me go right then, I would have sunk to the floor.  He said a few more things in an accent too thick for me to grasp - or perhaps he wasn't speaking English at all - and asked me again did I know who it was in that chamber.  I tried to give a coherent answer, I don't really remember exactly what words I said, but they seemed to please him.  He gave my arm a squeeze and released me with a kind smile that seemed almost out of place after the last few moments.  He joined his palms and bowed to me with an "Om Namah Shivaya", and went back to where he had been sitting.

When I stumbled back into the courtyard it seemed both far too bright and still dimmer than inside the ante-chamber, and nothing looked very real.  I felt for a moment like I was in a paper diorama or something.  It was difficult to orient myself.  I could still feel the echo of that chant in my chest and every hair on my arms and neck were raised.  But I felt giddy, inexplicably happy, and lighter than I had in longer than I could remember.  Still dazed and grinning like a fool I went looking for my friends.  When we talked later, none of them had felt what I did with that chant.  My friend, who was quickly becoming like a sister to me, did feel a light thrum and enjoyed it, but that was all.  Apparently no one in our party had experienced what I had.

Days later I would say that it felt like I had walked smack into Sri Bhagavan Shiva Himself, and He had touched my shoulder and smiled.  I stand by that assessment, it really did feel that way.  But regardless of if it was true, many things changed for me once we left that Temple.  My faith was revived and renewed.  I still knew almost nothing about where we had been yet I knew with a certainty that I had finally found the name to my faith and the form of the Divine that I had spent so much searching for.  But it was only when I had completely stopped searching and just lived that events brought me to Sri Shiva's feet.

I was lighter, happier, more relaxed and far less tense.  It was a few days before I realized that now the song replaying my my head wasn't "Memories" anymore, but a classic Shiva Dhun I had downloaded and listed to a few times before our trip.  I didn't know all of it, but it seems I knew more than I realized.  I was humming it outloud at times.  I had been under so much stress up until our trip, and much of it dogged me through our travels, but after that it was gone.  The calm centeredness and happiness which fell on me at Mahakaal stayed with me.  I noticed some of this, but I didn't realize the full extent until we came back from India and I was back in my daily life.  I began learning and practicing immediately, eventually putting together a puja room and altar.  I feel and see god speaking to me every day.  Over the winter, which was a bad one this year, I had absolutely no seasonal affective disorder, which I always have.

But these weren't the greatest gifts from Sri Shiva.  That came in two parts, the first on our last day in India and the second a few weeks after we came home.

I had a conviction that I wanted a statue of Hanuman.  I also wanted a Nataraja, but I had the same problem with both, I couldn't find one that "felt right" to me.  Then, our last day we were in Mumbai at a shop a few hours before our flight.  Like every store and shop all over India, they had a radio playing music: Hindi, Marathi, Bollywood, Indian music, not a trace of western music anywhere we went.  At the shop, I was looking a a Nataraj wondering if that one might be good to settle for, when I saw the Hanuman statue.  I put down Nataraj, picked up Hanuman, and the radio started playing "Memories".  I do not kid.  I hadn't thought about that song in more than a week.  My spouse, about as close to being an Atheist as one can get without flat out disbelieving the possibility of some kind of Deity somewhere, also heard it.  It was real, and it creeps her out thinking about it now too.  Of all the things she's managed to dismiss in one way or another, this is one she hasn't been able to.

Apparently that really was the Hanuman.  So a little freaked out, we went to pay for our items and confused the poor guy asking him about the music, then headed off to catch our flight home.

When we got home, the first thing we did was pick up Lilly's ashes.  I cried, but the pain wasn't as terrible as it had been.  I resolved I wouldn't adopt again for at least 6 months, I just didn't think I could bear it and I wanted to heal.  But something I had said for some time was that when the day came, I wanted to adopt a male, preferably a Maine Coon mix if possible - but you often don't get choices when you adopt from shelters.  Anyway, I didn't plan to do any such thing for quite some time.

Then, a couple of weeks later, a colleague of my other half contacted us about a friend of hers who had rescued a cat from the street.  But the cat had a lot of energy and they had an old dog and a small apartment, so they couldn't keep him.  He was healthy, neutered, and had all of his shots, they weren't asking any money, just a good home.  But, they had been looking for weeks and it seemed no one could take in a cat.  She asked if we might be interested.

I wasn't really so into the idea at first, but was intrigued that it was a male and young, and the rescuers were asking only for a good home after all the care they had paid for - not many people are so altruistic.  It also seemed strange that there was no one able to take in such a well cared for and young cat, there are almost always several interested parties...  So we asked for information and his name.  It turns out he is a Maine Coon mix, grey like Lilly was though he is a grey and black tux tabby.  His name?

Maharishi Ganesha Yogi.

We call him Rishi for short.

His rescuers, who named him, are neither Indian by heritage nor Dharma practitioners.  He immediately liked us the first time we visited to meet him, standing in our laps and purring and then lying down between us.  It appeared he was meant for us.  The following weekend we went to pick him up and bring him home, and he walked right into the carrier the moment it was on the floor with the door open.  Anyone who has had a cat knows how rare that is - his rescuers were as surprised as we were, it was not something he had done before and it's not something he's repeated since then.  He is incredibly gentle, sweet and funny.  He's also very, very clever, but then he is a Coon mix after all.  And, funnily enough, he likes to stay at the bathroom the door, just inside the threshold, when someone is in the shower.  If you close the door on him, he will stand outside and cry.

He has helped so much to heal the hole in our lives with laughter and joy in the last year.  He is a true gift and I am grateful beyond words.

Om Namah Shivaya.

This concludes my attempt at this exercise, one given by Sri Gurudev Subramuniyaswami to analyze where you have  been and what brought you to Sri Shiva, to be certain you truly believe this path with conviction and release any old systems that may still have hold on you and potentially cause confusion and conflict.  One day if I enroll in the course that Sampradaya offers, these posts might be useful in completing that assignment.

I've learned a few things about myself in doing this.  Hopefully others who might be curious about me might one day read this and learn a little about me as well. 

Pranam, and if you made it this far, thank you.

*edit -  So there are three main Lingam shrines in Mahakaaleshwar mandir: Mahakaala, Omkareshwar Mahadev and Nagachandreshwara.  each is directly above the other with Mahakaal underground and Nagachandreshwara at the top.  Nagachandreshwara is only open on Nag Panchami, and we were not there on that day.  Also, after thought, I remember the temple I had the most powerful reaction to was not in the main Mandir, but on the same commons ground in the complex and just across from the entrance to the Omkareshwar Mahadev entry.  Nandi sat on a high column before the entry to the ante-chamber.  I have no idea what that Temple was, but I'm going to try and track it down.  I will post when I do.  =)

**edit 10/17/14 -  I am pretty certain I now know the Temple.  It appears to be Karkoteshwar Mahadev, which seems to be the only other Lingam shrine within the Mahakaaleshwar compound walls.  There is also the Shaktipeetham, but I know that we didn't see that because the exterior structure looks nothing like where we were, which didn't have any steps up before the entry, and the Shaktipeetham doesn't have a Nandi outside.  Karkoteshwar Mahadev is the place a lot of people go to help remove some serious planetary Doshas, particularly Naag Dosha.  I do not have that Dosha, thankfully, but perhaps the darshan I had there has helped with others I may have...

Fin.

First in series

Second in series

Third in series.